This invention is concerned generally with providing furniture and related apparatus for facilitating self-care activities of partially disabled persons, such as chronic invalids and medical patients during rehabilitation.
In the early stages of rehabilitation a trip to the bathroom is often out of the question and a patient with mobility limitations requires a bedside commode for toileting. Whereas conventional commodes are well known, they are commonly bulky and relatively expensive.
Later, as the mobility of the patient improves, toileting can be resumed in the bathroom provided that the low height of the toilet does not present difficulties for the patient when getting down or up. That problem is sometimes met by providing a special device which fits over a toilet bowl and serves as a toilet riser. Again, such a device is normally quite expensive, partly due to the difficulty in properly and safely fitting the wide variety of sizes and shapes of conventional toilet bowls.
Some patients when bathing do not have the strength to get up from the bottom of the tub, and therefore must shower. However, standing in the shower is not always feasible and may involve appreciable risk and inconvenience, especially when washing the lower limbs. Many devices are known for aiding an invalid in the bathtub, but these tend to be either relatively expensive or not entirely safe.
Moreover, it is difficult for an invalid who cannot stand to transfer safely between a wheelchair, for example, and a conventional bathing device, a toilet, or even a bed or conventional chair. Previously available apparatus for aiding transfers of that type tend to be awkward in use and to provide limited stability.
A further source of difficulty in providing selfcare apparatus is the small space that is normally available for manipulating and for storing such apparatus, especially in the typical bathroom. That condition places a high premium on the development of compact units that are capable of serving many different functions.